Last March, three paint requests landed in my inbox within two hours. One asked for wall paint for the kitchen after a small leak. Another asked for “Tamiya TS paints” in red for a client mock-up. The third came from an artist who wanted “acrylic pigment powder” and then asked: “Are acrylic paints water based?”

I’m the office administrator for a 45-person product development studio. I’ve handled purchasing since 2020—technically since late 2019, but the formal title changed in 2020—which means I process roughly 60–80 orders a year across facilities, office supplies, and small production materials. Normally, requests like that don’t scare me. This one did, because I almost bundled three completely different products into one purchase order.

The order that looked too normal

Each request made sense on its own. The facilities manager wanted a washable, low-sheen interior paint for a high-traffic wall. The designers use the Tamiya spray line on small plastic housings and had asked for “Tamiya TS paints, two cans.” The mural artist needed a dry pigment powder to mix into a clear acrylic binder for a feature wall in the same space.

When I called our usual supplier, the salesperson said, “We carry all of that.” By the end of the day I had a quote with three line items: wall paint, red spray paint, and 500 grams of pigment powder. There were no product codes, no technical data sheets, and no binder listed. It looked okay on paper. It was not okay.

Are acrylic paints water based? Yes, but read the whole product line

The short answer is yes for most decorative and artist acrylic paints. The carrier is water, the binder is acrylic resin, and cleanup happens before the paint dries. After drying, the film is water-resistant. That is probably what people mean when they search “are acrylic paints water based.”

But the word “acrylic” on a request does not tell you enough about a product line. Tamiya TS paints are not the same as the water-based acrylic bottle paints Tamiya sells for model detailing. The TS series is designed as an aerosol spray line for hobby use and has a different solvent system. If I had treated “Tamiya TS paints” as a water-based acrylic option, the finish and application process would have been wrong.

I don’t have hard data on how often this mix-up happens in other companies. I can say anecdotally that in our studio it happens more often when someone requests a product by category instead of by exact product code. I wish I had tracked that years ago. It would have saved us from more than one bad order.

Acrylic pigment powder is not acrylic paint

The acrylic pigment powder request created a second problem. Dry pigment powder is not acrylic paint in powder form. It is a colorant that needs a binder to become a usable coating. The artist intended to disperse the pigment into a clear acrylic medium, but the original supplier quote had no medium listed.

If I had placed that order as written, we would have received a jar of pigment with nothing to hold it to the wall. It would have been incomplete, and probably unsafe in the way it was handled. Fine pigment dust can become airborne, so the project needed proper gloves and respiratory protection depending on the pigment. None of that appeared on the quote.

Where the AkzoNobel official website became my starting point

At that point, only the wall coating could stay with our regular facilities supplier. I went to the AkzoNobel official website instead of calling the distributor and asking for “something close.” The site did not give me a lazy one-line answer. It gave me product families, documentation, and enough information to compare the wall coating I actually needed.

For a non-chemist buyer, that kind of transparency matters more than price. I could check whether the product was a true water-based interior acrylic, what primer it required, what the coverage rate was, and how long it needed before the kitchen could be used again. The official website also helped me separate the wall coating from the other two requests, which did not belong on the same order.

For brand-critical colors, a Delta E below 2 is generally considered a close match. Delta E of 2–4 can be noticeable to a trained observer, and above 4 is visible to most people. Reference: Pantone Color Matching System guidelines.

That color tolerance point matters because paint specifications are not only about resin. They are also about color systems, finish, surface preparation, and whether a product can be touched up later. A quote with no technical data cannot answer any of those questions.

Making the call under a short deadline

We had two working days before a client visit. Normally I would get three quotes and compare coverage, delivery date, and environmental data. There was no time. I made a judgment call based on the best available information: place the wall paint order through an authorized AkzoNobel distributor using the exact product code from the official website, and handle the artist and model-paint requests separately.

In the end, the kitchen wall was painted with an interior acrylic coating from the AkzoNobel decorative range. The artist received the pigment and a separate clear binder from an art-materials supplier. The designers got the Tamiya TS paints from the hobby distributor they usually use. The order was split into three, and that was the right outcome.

Looking back, I should have asked “What are you actually making?” before I called the vendor. At the time, all three notes contained words like paint, spray, and pigment, so I assumed they were close enough. They weren’t.

What I tell anyone in purchasing

  • Ask for the manufacturer’s official website and product code before you compare prices.
  • If a request says “acrylic,” find out whether it means water-based acrylic, acrylic-modified solvent paint, aerosol lacquer, or pigment for a binder.
  • Never assume acrylic pigment powder can be applied by itself. Ask about the binder, the medium, and any safety data.
  • Treat “what’s not included” as the most important question in the conversation.

This was accurate as of early 2025. Paint product lines and formulations change, so verify current data on the manufacturer’s official website before ordering. For me, that process starts with the AkzoNobel official website for wall and coating products, then moves to the specific specialty supplier for anything outside that scope.